Municipal Fiber Network Will Let Customers Switch ISPs In Seconds (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader shares an Ars Technica report: Most cities and towns that build their own broadband networks do so to solve a single problem: that residents and businesses aren't being adequately served by private cable companies and telcos. But there's more than one way to create a network and offer service, and the city of Ammon, Idaho, is deploying a model that's worth examining. Ammon has built an open access network that lets multiple private ISPs offer service to customers over city-owned fiber. The wholesale model in itself isn't unprecedented, but Ammon has also built a system in which residents will be able to sign up for an ISP -- or switch ISPs if they are dissatisfied -- almost instantly, just by visiting a city-operated website and without changing any equipment. Ammon has completed a pilot project involving 12 homes and is getting ready for construction to another 200 homes. Eventually, the city wants to wire up all of its 4,500 homes and apartment buildings, city Technology Director Bruce Patterson told Ars. Ammon has already deployed fiber to businesses in the city, and it did so without raising everybody's taxes.

Comments

Why do you need an ISP at all, then?

[kheldan]

I don't really see the purpose of this. If you have the physical network, then all you need is a connection to the rest of the public Internet. Otherwise you get email service from whoever you want; aren't there companies that provide POP3/SMTP service to whoever needs it? Also many people are perfectly happy with web-based email. What else does the average Internet user actually need? Streaming services for audio and video are available all over the place. Of course isn't this what ISPs are afraid of: Municipal Internet providing last-mile connectivity to the general public, making them irrelevant?

I must be missing something here, why is this even important?

out of the ISP's hands - so what is the ISP for?

[supernova87a]

This is skirting the real story here -- which is that such public infrastructure could be managed by a public entity (or a private entity charged with providing the highest quality bandwidth) with no incentive for excess profit or attempts to limit the bandwidth / quality because they want to increase profits. And by the way, fiber is a public infrastructure generally, because most towns grant the franchise to dig up streets / string cable to one company only.

So, if an ISP is only a retailer of services on the dumb pipe that everyone has access to, what is the ISP's purpose, other than billing and helping users get access to the pipe? Why not take the fiber into the city's hands to begin with?

The story here isn't that a town has made it easy for customers to switch providers with the click of a button -- it's that a city has taken the role of ISPs completely out of providing the infrastructure and removed the excuses that ISPs that their quality of delivered bandwidth per $ differs for unjustifiable reasons.

They are saying that customers don't actually want to be differentiating their choice on artificial limitations on their bandwidth quality (which should be the same for everyone). If ISPs are really competing based on other value that they add (customer service?) and not their monopoly over a public infrastructure, let them do so and see what customers actually start to choose based on.

Re:Meaningless headline

[clarkn0va]

breaking any of the rules will no longer be a mere TOS-violation, but breaking the law — enforced not by clueless customer support, but by the (equally clueless, but armed) police. Even if you escape a fine, you will be banned from the city's network and there goes your ability to "switch ISPs".

Yes, in much the same way that you are carted off to jail and permanently blacklisted when you are late paying for tap water or garbage collection.

What are you going on about?

Re:lawsuit

[EndlessNameless]

Since one is customer, and the other is one of several ISPs, then what "regulation" is needed?

Someone has to run the fiber, maintain it, replace it, and decide who gets to use the free space in the conduit (because someone eventually will).

If the government doesn't own the fiber or the conduits, then it will have to regulate the companies that do.

Want a real life example? Look at utility poles.

My state has laws that force utility companies to share poles when there is space available on them. Most states have similar regulations. Why? Because they didn't want to share with anyone, and we don't want 10 poles on every block. There is occasional squabbling, but it works.

What are the chances that the industry will behave better with fiber or underground conduits? Not very good, I would say.

I personally don't care if a service is managed by a dicknosed bureaucrat or an assfaced CEO. My ideological preference is whatever actually works. They can figure out how to play nice with everyone and deliver what people want, or they can go to hell.

Heavily-regulated residential utilities seem to be both reliable and affordable, so I'll roll with that. I have no complaints about my electric, water, gas, or sewage. Only the minimally-regulated cable and internet industry seems to be jacked up---at least in the five states where I've lived. So I have no problem trying to make the cable/ISP industry more like the others. If that doesn't work, walk it back and try something else.